If Not Always
by phollie
Summary: Sometimes, Matt sleeps. But sometimes, he doesn't. T. Matt/Mello. Inspired by Bialy.


Phollie here with yet another Matt/Mello fic. Dammit. I can't help myself. And I don't want to. It should be illegal to pour out this much of my soul into two fictional delinquents. But I don't want it to be, so here we are.

On another note, is it _impossible _for me to write a Matt fic without Mello creeping in? This was supposed to be entirely Matt, no dialogue, and then Mello flashed me a pretty smile and I just caved. He's a frustrating muse, but…but I really like how this came out. -blush- So, uh, thanks, Mel. I guess. Ya prick.

This one's for Bialy, my cyber-wife. If you haven't checked out her work, you will touch heaven when you do. I'm kind of the Mikami of fangirls for her. xD (You should all check out her fic "The Train Is Not A Metaphor" if you want something chilling and beautiful involving Mello and L. Really.)

Don't own Death Note, Taking Back Sunday, or Bright Eyes.

**

* * *

**

**if not always.**

_[this glass house is burning down._

_you light the match, i'll stick around.]_

* * *

Sometimes, Matt sleeps.

At a time like this, when things are starting to fizzle and implode above his head, he feels a little bad for how quickly it's become a hobby. He's sure he's slept away entire years, because the spaces in between a time of clean sweaters, hot lunches, and impossible expectations and a time of bright screens, scar tissue, and cigarette smoke are nothing but negative space. So, just to fill the gap, Matt sleeps.

He's moved the mattress to the floor. He was starting to feel like the chick from "The Princess and the Pea" with it propped up above ground; come to find out, it wasn't a pea that was digging into his back, but the pistol that Mello kept hidden atop the springboard.

Mello blames it on paranoia. Matt blames it on something a little more shallow.

The sheets smell like nicotine dreams and unwashed hair. If the latter scent is his or Mello's, he doesn't know, because they're both looking a little grody anymore and neither really care. There's no Roger lurking in the brick walls waiting to herd them off to the showers. There's also no real _need _for such rebellion, but it's in their blood, so they settle for dirty laundry and dirty hearts, and they do it with smirks on their faces. _You can't do anything about it_, they think. _You can't stop us. _

He rolls over and holds his breath. He's kept the lights on, a new unexplainable habit, just like chewing the inside of his lip until it's bleeding and raw, or how he's been keeping a mental tally of how many times he can say "fuck" in one day. December 21st, one hundred and forty-five. Mello's got him beat by thirty-two.

Mello's got him beat.

Matt sleeps.

* * *

But sometimes, he doesn't.

Tonight, it doesn't come as easily as it should. The sinking tide is neglecting him for another soul in another city, another soul with listless eyes and nervous hands, maybe living somewhere like Miami or New York. If such a person exists, someone just like Matt, he doesn't think he'd like him too much. He feels overheated and as if his tongue is too thick for his mouth. He's probably dehydrated, because forgetting to drink goes hand in hand with forgetting to eat, but once he'd stand up and make his way to the kitchen, sleeping would be hopeless, and he'd have to face the white glow of a computer for another six hours or so.

So instead, Matt keeps his eyes closed, waits for the tide, and waits for Mello's footsteps.

* * *

Sometimes, Matt has these thoughts.

He's had them since he was a kid. The come in scrambled waves, but when they _do_ come, they stay, they linger, and they _sear_ like hot knives cutting into the soft flesh of his neck. They're not like Mello's thoughts, rotating on a bloody axis and echoing with the sound of bullets and screams, but _no one's_ thoughts are like Mello's, and Matt's nothing special, really.

But these thoughts, the ones he's getting right now as he lies beneath a musky sheet in his boxers, they're brutal. They're nasty and sour and make his stomach do horrible things, like flip and slide and swell like some fucked up roadside show. His thoughts are infrared, Mello's are ultraviolet, but both can distort.

He sucks in another breath through a chapped gap in his lips. God, he needs a shower, but he needs sleep more, and he needs Mello to stop leaving in the middle of the goddamn night like this so that these thoughts can go away. Fine, let the guy stroll through the door with a scowl and a scar, let him laugh at the way Matt keeps the all the lights on, let him blaze and shout and do whatever he _wants_, just make the thoughts go away, and Matt will be a happy man.

His eyes open, and he sees unsightly water stains on the ceiling, and he just doesn't give a shit anymore, and he mutters, "Fuck."

He kicks off the sheet, stands up, ambles to the bathroom with bedhead and stiff knees. _One hundred and forty-six._

* * *

Sometimes, Matt stands beneath the torpid stream of the showerhead and contemplates screaming. Most of the time, he doesn't do anything, because his throat is sore and it would only piss him off more to hear the sound of his own ragged voice cutting through the steam. He usually doesn't scream.

* * *

But sometimes, he does.

* * *

Sometimes, Matt gets the most brain-numbing feeling of passivity in spite of all the shit he's done, all that Mello's done, all that they've done _together_, and it's a torpedo of something like rage and hopelessness and _how'd we end up inside these walls _that gets under his skin and in his bones and in his conscience, and it makes him shake, and it makes him curse, and it makes him want to tear his own skin off just to see if he'd bleed, because he's so sick, he's so tired, but he can't _sleep_ because of all these thoughts, but _no one's_ thoughts are like Matt's, _no one's._

* * *

Sometimes, after he's air-dried, dressed, and making a bowl of stale cereal at the kitchen counter, the door opens, and in walks a guy he doesn't recognize.

It's Mello, of course, but it's also _not_ Mello. With him standing in the doorway, all long legs and lost eyes, it's another one of those times where Matt sincerely thinks that he's slept away half his life, or was pushed off the edge of the world and has crawled his way back up from deep space, only to find that Mello's eyes have darkened, his face has thinned out, and things aren't anything like how they used to be.

Mello kicks the door shut behind him and says nothing. It's best that way, they've found. It doesn't open any black windows to Matt's thought process, and Mello gets the perk of looking like that hateful, invulnerable thing that they both know he isn't.

Matt chews his Cheerios, resting his elbows on the counter and looking at Mello sleepily. "You hungry?" he asks, mouth full.

Mello clears his throat, coughs, goes a little pale. He brings his fist to his mouth for a moment before muttering, "Pour me a drink."

"Thought you hated whiskey."

"Just pour it."

And Matt does. Because, sometimes, it's all he can do.

* * *

These are the 'sometimes' that stick with Matt the most.

Mello gets drunk beyond comprehension. His face is finally flushed with some colour, and that's relieving on its own, but what isn't relieving about this situation is that Mello's lying longways on the couch and crying.

Matt, of course, knows what to do. Keep his distance in the armchair, stay quiet, eat his third bowl of Cheerios with his eyes to the ceiling. This doesn't happen often, but it's happened enough for Matt to have made the mistake of saying, "Hey, man, you alright?" or even a simple "Mel…?"

He's an angry crier, which makes sense. Every one of the guy's movements has a ring of rage to it, let it be walking, crying, laughing (a rarity, but Matt's seen it done, and it's a high and lonesome sound). Right now, he's gripping his hair and pressing his fists into his eyes and doing everything that the enigma of _Mello_ shouldn't be doing, but who really gives a fuck anyway about enigmas and aliases when the world is caving in, right?

"I fucking hate this," Mello slurs pathetically. Matt hears the ghost of an accent long abandoned curl around the edges of his words, and something about it makes his head about one hundred pounds heavier. As for Mello's head, he bangs it on the back of the couch as if trying to knock his dizzy brain out through his ears. "This isn't - _fuck_, this _isn't_ how it's supposed to be, god dammit!"

Matt spoons in a mouthful of cereal. Cheerios taste like cigarettes and copper.

"It was supposed to be _me_," Mello goes on. To anyone else, his words would just sound like wobbly noise, but Matt's used to this, so it all connects in an almost-right order. "It was supposed to be _me_, not him, not Near, not all this shit, and - and now I'm all torn up, look at me, I'm a fucking monster, Jesus Christ…"

Mello makes a horrid, strangled sound in the back of his throat, and Matt just chews his cereal, eyes to the ceiling. All those water stains.

"It was supposed to be you and me," Mello says weakly, his voice barely breaking the barrier between silence and sound. "Right…?" The sound of dirty hair fanning over the couch as he turns his head. Matt's obliged to look back at him, and wishes he hadn't. "Tell me I'm right, Matt," Mello croaks, his eyes barely open through the fog of whiskey and mental collapse. "Tell me it was supposed to be you and me."

Matt's thoughts disconnect from his brain, because he just keeps eating his cereal without planning the motions of his arm or his mouth, yet he's thinking, _Oh, man. We are so far from home._

* * *

Sometimes, midnight comes.

Once Matt puts his bowl and spoon in the sink, left to be rinsed out a couple weeks from now, he passes behind the couch that Mello currently lies deadpanned on. He's staring off into space, and there's far too much room out there for him to be dipping into, so Matt stops, stares at the top of his blonde head, and says, "You should sleep tonight, you know."

Mello doesn't move. His hand, an almost graceful thing had it not been for all the ugly things it's held, dangles carelessly over the back of the couch. "I'm okay."

Exhausted, Matt wipes his clammy hand over his face and groans. "Mel, you're so far from okay right now that I could just _shit_."

"I don't want to sleep."

Matt's gaze drops to the floor. It's suddenly a feat in its own that he's managed to keep his eyes open for this long. There's an acute note of mourning in his voice when he eventually murmurs, "Yeah, that makes one of us."

They fall silent, and Matt walks over to the mattress on the floor to collect the sheet. He balls it up and tosses it over to Mello, who makes no attempt at catching it. It falls out of its bundle in midair and lands deftly over his sprawled legs. Not another word is passed between them, and within the hour, Mello's breath becomes soft and cadenced with the occasional slurred grievance. He looks like a broken cherub, like he's a little too young to be doing what he's doing, but he isn't going to stop anytime soon because he's too bright to fade and too cold to burn.

Matt pulls his goggles over his eyes, sits before the computer, and kind of hates him for it.

Mello sleeps.

Sometimes, if not always, Matt stays awake.

_

* * *

_

['cause i swear that i'm dying,

_slowly, but it's happening.]_


End file.
